


Flavors

by Thomas McQuinn (AtrydvonAschoen)



Category: Homestuck, MS Paint Adventures
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2010-08-11
Updated: 2010-08-24
Packaged: 2017-10-11 01:17:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 15,394
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/106672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AtrydvonAschoen/pseuds/Thomas%20McQuinn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"He's here!" She almost knocked over her chair in a hurry to get out of it. "Something brought him here!"<br/>Terezi only hoped that John could breathe in the Insipisphere like the Trolls could.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Terezi chuckled to herself as she tapped her way down the hallway from the resting areas. Considering how often Sollux and Karkat seemed to wind up all over each other, she found it hard to believe ol' two-tongues wasn't using the haircut as an excuse to give himself an aneurism trying to resist the urge to treat Karkat as a popsicle.

She would've been saddened by the fact that she couldn't see the scene she had just borne sightless witness to, but the cornucopoea of scents that cascaded from Karkat due to the combined effects of a Sollux in his lap and Terezi being privy to their secret stylings was a banquet in and of itself.

Finding her way to the main hall, where the other computers were set up, Terezi tracked down her own computer monitor, adorned with various bright and powerful scents (thanks to Gamzee alchemizing a massive set of scented markers in one of his not-entirely-off-his-rocker moments). Taking note that she was the only one in the room, Terezi woke her monitor from standby and began searching the cold, licorice void for signs of John. It wasn't long until an acrid smoke trail burnt itself into her senses, and she followed it to... a gate.

Great, so she was going to have to take a shot in the dark to find him. But wait, there was something odd about the trail... she figured it out pretty quick: something had redirected him, the smoke clustering thicker at a 'joint' in the trail where it took an abrupt right-angle turn.

Frowning, she called up a Trollian log she had saved a short while ago, before Karkat started messing with John. This close to the Rift, they couldn't really pull their punches. They'd lose contact with the humans soon enough.

\---  
GC: H3Y SOLLUX  
GC: GOT 4 MOM3NT?  
GC: 1 N33D TO KNOW HOW TO FOLLOW G4T3S THROUGH T1M3.  
TA: what?  
TA: why?  
GC: 1 W4S TROLL1NG ON3 OF TH3 HUM4NS 4ND H3 TOOK 4 D1FF3R3NT SHORTCUT TH4N 1 3XP3CT3D.  
TA: oh. that'2 all. iit'2 ea2y. cliick the gate and hiit F2.  
TA: ii2 that all you wanted?  
TA: or ii2 there 2omethiing el2e?  
GC: TH4NK YOUUU!!!   
GC: 1LL PUT 1N 4 GOOD WORD FOR YOU W1TH K4RK4T.  
GC: 1 KNOW HOW YOU W4NT SO B4DLY TO G3T H1M TO NOT1C3 YOU.  
TA: oh for fuck2 2ake.  
TA: ii make one 2liip of the tongue2 and everyone ha2 two me22 wiith me about it.  
TA: ii told you, ii don't like karkat that way.  
GC: H3H3H3H3H3  
GC: DONT L13.  
TA: look, he'2 biitching at me about 2omethiing he want2 to a2k me about.  
TA: ii gotta go, he 2ay2 iit'2 pretty iimportant.  
GC: H3H, 4LR1GHT, BY3.  
TA: iif you have any other computer problem2, a2k vrii2ka. 2he could u2e a liittle companiion2hiip after what happened the other day wiith tavro2.  
\---

A quick click and a sniff to locate the pink-scented key in question, and Terezi's monitor flipped to... another view of the Veil. "Well, that doesn't do me any good..." she grumbled, and zoomed out. Something seemed off about Skaia all of a sudden. Like it was... more detailed. Frowning, she directed the view to Prospit, and ran her tongue across the monitor.  
One... two... three... four...! "Six towers...!" Quickly flitting the view window aside, she zoomed across the Incipisphere in an instant, and Derse swung into view with absolute ease, five standing towers and one shattered wreck conspicuous grape against the licorice.

"That doesn't make any sense..." the camera view swung again, this time to the Veil; and sure enough, situated there on one of the asteroids, she could taste the rainbow-colored abandoned pawn-factory that served as their home base, and a small fiery speck of orange with a disturbingly inactive lime smudge next to it.

"He's here!" She almost knocked over her chair in a hurry to get out of it. "Something brought him here!" A blend of surprise, delight, and a twinge of fear coursed through her mind as she practically bolted down the hallway, staff held out before her like a jousting lance, lungs straining as she took massive breaths and released them again, the blank slate of the world briefly flashing with scented color as she sought the airlock--

**WHUMP**.

"ANGH!" The noise that escaped her clamped hand was rather undignified. Someone had stood an immensely strong wall in her way, and she was entirely convinced she may have damaged her delicate nose on it.

"What in the name of all that is and ever was are you of all people running down a hallway? There is no excuse for such loodicrous behavior!"

There was no mistaking the pompous tone. It made more sense that it was the freak of nature and not a wall. A wall would've given a little at that speed.

Sniffing derisively, Terezi straightened her glasses, and felt along her cane. Luckily, it had reacted as expected, folding into its' whip state on impact. A quick flick of her wrist, and it was stiffened again. "You are going to help me, Equius. Come on." She grabbed his arm and walked past him, attempting to pull him along; all she succeeded in doing was unbalancing herself when he predictably refused to budge.

"And what makes you think you have the right to boss me around, gutterwench?"

Not one for subtleties, Terezi whipped about and planted the end of her cane against Equius' temple, grinning darkly at the pseudo-squawk that followed. "Because I am a girl and you are going to be a nice guy and I need someone who loves... being... STRONG." She pushed a little harder with each word, emphasizing her point; the distinct odor of sweat began to come in through the pain in her nose.

It almost disgusted her how easily his buttons could be pushed. She would've avoided dealing with him, but after that run-in her sniffer was going to take a bit to be able to pick out scents other than sweat, blood, and pain. At least this way she'd have someone handy that could carry John if he was incapacitated.

"I-I suppose I could excuse a little... haughtiness under the circumstances," Equius consented, regretting his assent in reinforcing her cane with materials from his robots during their doomed SGRUB session. "I am your humble servant for the time being."

Terezi nodded, and tucked her cane beneath her arm, leaping up and deftly situating herself on his back, her legs wrapped around his waist. With an audible THWACK on his backside with the cane, she pointed ahead. "To the entrance of our castle, noble steed!" she cackled. With a whimper that might've almost been mistaken for a whinny, Equius took off at a dead sprint.

Terezi only hoped that John could breathe in the Insipisphere like the Trolls could.


	2. Blackberry Red Lime

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which one troll is left dazed, another is left confused, and somewhere in the universe, a dozen alternate Karkats become slightly less enraged to make up for one Karkat hogging all the RIGHTEOUS FURY.

When the world around you was seen through scent, and sound, and touch, you found certain aspects of the world to be distinct. The dull sounds of a moving body, the ungiving hardness of metal, the sweet kiss of fresh air... much of the world around you was a smorgasbord of sensation. 

Even the act of riding piggyback on a man with the capability and occasional gumption to headbutt boulders as he sprinted down a long metal hallway had its' own distinct charm, a near weightless feeling reminiscent of falling sideways. Scent and touch and sound screamed by so fast the mind couldn't process anything beyond fleeting spikes of lucidity.

Despite his rough demeanor, Equius could be trusted, and Terezi had to be thankful of that. He wasn't stupid. Even if he didn't feel her hands clamped into his shoulders in a vice-grip, or the way her legs held to his sides hard enough to crack the ribs of lesser, fleshier beings, he could likely tell she was entirely at his mercy. At these speeds, she truly was blind.

  


  


"Do you mind too terribly if I ask why you have need of my services, or would that be overstepping my bounds?" Equius snarked flatly, barely audible over the pounding of adrenaline in her ears. For someone covering such vast distance, Equius certainly showed his endurance; he didn't sound winded in the slightest.

  
"Something brought one of the human kids here," she said at length, gritting her teeth at the phantom pain of her body straining to resist the forces placed upon it by hanging onto the perpetual powerhouse. "When I saw him on the monitor, he wasn't moving. We're going to go get him."

"WHAT!?"

Equius skidded to a halt abruptly, an act that caused Terezi to nearly fall off of him. As it was, his head served to stop her forward momentum, although it felt like being kicked in the gut. When the haze of pain subsided enough that she could draw breath again-- what felt like ages-- she slapped the top of Equius' head with her palm, mindful of the broken horn.

"What do you think you're stopping for? We gotta hurry!" Another slap. It stung her a bit, but at least she was working out a little anger over his rough treatment. She was certain to have some choice bruises after today.

"You honestly expect me to assist one of those-- those-- those apes!? I refuse! I will not be accessory to such a stoopid request!" None-too-gently, Equius reached up and behind himself, picking Terezi up by the top of her shirt and deftly swinging her to one side to set her down, despite her protesting squawk and a few well-placed swats to the face from her cane.

"You can assist the human yourself, Pyrope," he snarled, turning and stomping back down the hallway, fists clenched at his sides. He needed to break something. Or visit Aradia. Yes, spending time with his beloved would be preferable. He grumbled a few choice words under his breath, pointedly ignoring Terezi's diminishing complaints.

"If that human dies, we're all fucked! You know that!" She stomped a sneakered foot out of frustration; the musclebrained horselump wasn't listening. "Equius!" He rounded a corner, and she was alone. 

She didn't even know where she was in the complex; her senses were still reeling from the gutpunch of his abrupt stop, and the fact that he very nearly strangled her with her own shirt in picking her up that way didn't help matters.

Seething, Terezi lashed her cane out at the wall.

"WHOASHIT!" _CLANK!_

...walls didn't sound like people. They certainly didn't fight back, either.

Terezi drew a deep, slow breath, and her blank eyes widened behind her ruby shades at the burst of lime and blackberries that assaulted her nostrils. Whipping about, she sniffed hard, and an image appeared in her mind's eye, of peach under licorice atop lime and--

"GC?" John blinked owlishly behind his glasses, lowering the Wrinklefucker. Twin flickering almonds in the peach of his face, a cherry-bellpepper cloying sweetness streaked down one cheek. A scent very similar to another she'd smelled in the past. Rage and gray giving way to a brief spurt of candy-red delectably bright against the darkness...

Snapping herself from her brief memory trip, she frowned at John, and folded her arms, turning her nose up and her head to one side.

"Some gentleman you are!" She huffed. "Go disappearing off on your own, worry me to no end, show up unannounced-- give me one good reason why I should be nice to you!" She knew she was laying it on thick. She told herself it was for his benefit. Certainly not to hide the relief she felt at the fact that John hadn't wound up suffocating in the Void, nosirree.

To his credit, John was oblivious to her ham-handed acting. He was more interested in the fact that this was his first time encountering one of the trolls face-to-face. GC quirked an eyebrow, and sniffed, turning to focus her attention on him again, only to find him staring dumbly at her. "What?" She suddenly felt self-conscious, and nervously adjusted her shirt, patted an imaginary stray hair back into place on her head.

"You're really pretty," John said, almost immediately. Bluegreen warmth rushed to her face, and she made a choking noise. 

"I mean, I saw your picture before, but it was small, and I couldn't really tell, and-- what's wrong?" He tilted his head a bit. GC was abruptly very interested in the floor, or so it seemed. His eyes wandered to the two short, sharp orange horns atop her head. Tentatively, he reached out to poke one of them, and yelped when she slapped his hand away, a guarded look on her face.

"What do you think you're doing?" She snapped at him, and he cradled his hand like a wounded animal. That had stung quite a bit. It felt like she was wearing some sort of hard glove or something. He flexed his hand experimentally to make certain she hadn't broken anything. "Sorry, I just--"

"You just what? Just thought, 'Oh, lookit me, here I am being all cute and making a girl blush so I can try and cop a feel! I'm so witty! Blar blar!' Well you can just stuff that thought, buster!" She poked him in the chest with a finger, bringing her face close to his. John found himself staring into GC's blank, unseeing eyes, unable-- or unwilling-- to look away.

Part of her regretted it. This close, the scent of that sticky red streak filled Terezi's senses. He'd hit his head in the landing, she realized; that was blood, from a small cut on the side of his head, just beneath his hairline. The realization that humans apparently all had the same blood was slow in coming. So was the fact that their lips were mere inches apart. All it would take was a single, 'accidental' nudge forward... just a little, small step across that unfathomable gap--

"WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU, YOU STUPID BLIND BITCH!?"

GC snapped to attention at the irate shout, and spun about, taking a wheezing deep breath as she did so. Her cane thunked hard against John's leg, and he uttered a yelp, his legs swept from underneath him. Reflexively, he reached out to grab the nearest thing he could.

A soft, warm hand gripped Terezi's arm abruptly; before she had enough time to register the pull, her 180 turned into a 360 and she yelped in surprise as the world upended, her balance lost. The wind was knocked out of her by the landing, and for the third time that day, the world as she knew it went black.

Stars flickered in the darkness as her mind struggled to register what the hell had just happened. Her head was resting on something soft and warm; she could hear a low, rhythmic thumping. As her lungs filled, the world flared green in her mind's eye.

John groaned, one hand clutching the back of his head, a dull throb beginning in his skull. If the game didn't kill him, he was certain to die of brain damage from all these hits he was taking. He lifted his head, looking down at the black blur on his chest. "Sorry," He mumbled sheepishly, and dropped his head to the floor again with a sigh. Today wasn't going well.

\---

Karkat grumbled to himself, running a hand through his hair as he stomped down one of the corridors of the laboratory. Even if it was his idea to have Sollux give him a trim, he hadn't expected a whole damn lecture on the merits of hair care and proper combing. 

It still felt damn weird, but at least he didn't look like he'd just crawled out of the recuperacoon all the time. He still couldn't figure out why Nepeta started giggling at him when he walked past her earlier, though. Or why Kanaya had made that crack about him 'obsessing' over the humans.

Stuffing his hands into his pockets to keep himself from playing with his hair further, he rounded a corner and almost plowed into Equius, who waas storming up the hallway from the direction of the lab's main entrance, looking as pissed as always. Karkat sprung to one side as the taller troll stomped past, growling something under his breath about Terezi and humans.

"Watch it, horse-ass!" He snapped, but got a dismissive and insulting hand gesture as his only response. Grabbing the reinforced door to the room he shared with Aradia, Equius snatched it open and slammed it behind him, causing the ground to shake. Karkat glared at the door, and started to walk away when he heard it swing open again.

"What in the name of... nevermind." Equius just shook his head. "Your matesprit attempted to corral me into assisting her with some loodicrous matter involving the humans. She said one of them was here in the Veil. I would advise that you keep that Pyrope woman in line. She means trouble."

Karkat's eye twitched. A human, in the Veil? That couldn't happen! There was no way, he had seen their timelines, he knew it wasn't possible--

Wait a damn minute.

"TEREZI'S NOT MY MATESPRIT GODDAMMIT!" He raged impotently at the closed door. There was no response. He could feel his head beginning to pound, that familiar angry flame burning in his mind as he turned and stormed up the hallway, ranting at the walls. He was going to get to the bottom of this.

Storming through the corridors, he angrily brushed Gamzee aside ("What the fuck's up, my motherfuck-AGH!"*thunk*) and took a shortcut through the computer room. He was a troll on a mission, and boy was he pissed. 

Ducking one of Tavros' horns as the Taurus came around a corner, he swung into one of the lesser-used hallways of the lab. 

"WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU, YOU STUPID BLIND BITCH!?" he roared into the hallway. Merely a moment later, a yelp and a clatter brought his attention to another hallway, and he snapped his head toward the noise, snorting angrily. Teeth grit in a perpetual grimace, he stomped purposefully around the corner, and came up short, his rage falling short in the face of absolute confusion.

There on the floor before him lay that damned John boy, his glasses and that stupid steam-iron-hammer lying off to one side. Next to them were Terezi's cane and glasses; the troll girl was situated on top of John as if they had abruptly decided to take a nap in the middle of the hallway. 

She was absolutely oblivious to Karkat's mounting ire, acting like she was deliriously surprised by the fact that she was so intimately tangled with the human boy. For some reason, that just pissed him off even more. Sentences refused to form; all he could do was sputter.

John lifted his head, blinked a few times at the angry gray troll, and uttered a flat groan before letting his head fall again.

Terezi sniffed, once, twice, and turned to face Karkat, a dark seafoam blush rising to her cheeks. "Um... hi."

Elsewhere in the complex, Nepeta briefly awoke from a nap to the sound of a bloodcurdling scream of pure rage and anger. Sleepily brushing at her eyes, she sighed and curled up a little further into a ball. Karkat really needed to find an outlet for all that rage. He was going to give himself an aneurism one of these days.


	3. Blind Accusations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Karkat rants, Terezi explains, John is confused, and Equius asks the question on everybody's mind.

"ARE YOU FUCKING INSANE!?"

Terezi uttered a longsuffering sigh as she levered herself upright, her hand bumping a pair of glasses on the floor. She flicked them open and slid them onto her face.

"Do you have ANY FUCKING CLUE how much SHIT we are in if he's HERE and NOT IN THE GAME!?"

John rubbed at his face a few times, and blindly searched the area around him for his glasses. Fingers fumbling onto the arm of a pair, he pulled them on and opened his eyes, blinking rapidly.

"If HE'S HERE and not THERE then the GIRL DIES and then they CAN'T BEAT THE GAME, and then WE! Are COMPLETELY! FUCKED!"

The world was blood red. In focus, but very, very red. "Whoa."

"AND ANOTHER THING--" Karkat's rant came to a grinding halt as he took in the scene before him: Terezi wearing John's glasses like it was the most normal thing in the world, and John looking around while wearing Terezi's.

That was when he noticed the dried blood trail on the side of the human's head.

All color drained from Karkat's face as he quickly looked around. 

Whether by sheer luck of just stupid coincidence, there didn't seem to be anyone else nearby. Bounding forward, he roughly hauled John and Terezi upright by the arms, prompting a pained utterance from the former and a swat on the head from the latter.

Ignoring Terezi's protesting, he shoved her cane into her hands, practically threw the Wrinklefucker at John, who caught it awkwardly by the head, and began to propel them down the hall. "We can't be out here," he growled inbetween their complaints.

John didn't know what to make of the situation, but he had a weird feeling he should play along with... CG? He certainly seemed angry enough for the role. He stowed the Wrinklefucker away into his Strife Specibus as he was roughly lead down a dozen similar-looking hallways, taking note of the fact that GC seemed to be wearing his glasses.

After a bit, CG stopped before a door with the Cancer zodiac sign on it, and swung the door open, practically booting the two of them into the room before swinging in and slamming the door shut behind him. Two clicks and the small room was flooded with light, causing John to squint.

Terezi frowned as she took in the scent of the room she found herself in, and turned about to face Karkat, who seemed to be pressed up against the door with his ear to it. She gave him a light jab in the head with the end of her cane, and was rewarded with an angry squawk. "What the hell was all that for?" She growled. "You could've pulled my arm off!"

CG glowered at her, and pointed accusingly at John, who to his credit was quick to avoid the finger that came half an inch from his left eye. "WHAT THE--" He stopped, took a deep, ragged breath, and started again, a good deal quieter, but no less angry.

"What the hell is he doing here? Have you told anyone other than Equius?" GC shook her head. "Seriously, Karkat? You really think I'd be so stupid? I only told Equius because I needed his help," she said flatly, folding her arms over her chest. "He was unconscious when I saw him on the monitor, and you know I can't exactly carry people. Blind, remember?"

Karkat, to his credit, managed to avoid both biting his lower lip off and screaming, although his face was turning quite a few shades of red-- or at least he would be if John wasn't still wearing those red glasses. At the moment, everything was red. He glanced over at GC. "Hey GC... did you used to have an astigmatism?"

The blind girl blinked in surprise, and nodded. "Yeah, how'd you know?" A sniff answered her question before he even opened his mouth, and her hand shot up to the square frames sitting on her face. She turned faintly bluegreen, and slid John's glasses from her face, holding them out for him. "S-sorry."

Karkat watched the exchange with a nonplussed look on his face. When the glasses had been properly returned to their respective owners, he pushed past the two of them and sat on the edge of his bed, giving John a flat stare that left him slightly unnerved.

After almost a full minute of staring at the human, Karkat closed his eyes. "Terezi, leave the room." She quirked an eyebrow, but didn't budge. 

"I said go." 

She tapped her way over to his computer chair and sat down, then prodded his knee. "Whatever you have to say to John, you can say to me too," she stated matter-of-factly, affecting an air of stately dignity that was almost a perfect opposite to Karkat's mounting rage. When the angry troll wheeled on her, John interjected. "Whatever it is, she can stay."

Rather than deflate Karkat's anger, it just served as an effective auto-parry. "YOU DON'T GET A SAY IN THIS GODDAMMIT!" He whipped his head back to Terezi and jabbed a finger at the door. "OUT!" 

She didn't budge, but rather affixed him with a blank, angry stare. "It's about his blood, isn't it?" When Karkat deflated, she allowed herself a malicious grin. "What, you don't remember what happened the other day? I know aaaall about your little blood secret. No big deal, really." She licked her lips and uttered that damned creepy little giggle-laugh.

John went from 'ready to take an angry Karkat' to 'what the hell is going on' in half a 'H3H3', and it showed on his face. At the scent of confusion emanating from the lime blur, she nodded toward him. 

"Troll society is based on a hierarchy of hemochromes," She explained. "Purple colors on top, blue colors below that, green colors after that, and red colors are on the bottom. I, for instance, am considered a low-level blueblood, or a high-level greenblood, depending on who you ask."

John nodded, absently touching two fingers to the dried blood on the side of his head. Red blood meant that by the troll hierarchy, he must be at the very bottom. He glanced over at Karkat. "So what did she mean by 'blood secret'?" He asked.

Karkat gave a resigned sigh, and lowered his head, trying to screw up the courage to explain it. Even now, with the entire matter of blood hierarchy out the window due to the fact that there were only twelve trolls left, he still hated talking about it. 

Luckily for him, he didn't have a chance to.

Before he could say anything, the door came off its' hinges. John had the Fear No Anvil out before anyone could blink, least of all the tall troll standing in the doorway holding the door by the handle like it were paper. He relaxed when he realized it was the one who had left Terezi in the hallway earlier.

"So this is the human," Equius said, setting the dislodged door aside and stepping into the room, oblivious to Karkat's screamed dismay at his door being relocated. The musclebound troll snorted at the human in a manner rather like that of an angry horse, then turned his attention to Karkat.

He frowned, and raised an eyebrow. John resisted the urge to ask him if he was the Troll Dwayne Johnson, but only just.

With the utmost of care, he nudged the human back toward the bed, causing John to stumble and sit down rather hard next to Karkat. Setting his hands on the shoulders of both the troll and human, he lowered his eyes to level with them, an unreadable expression on his face.

Karkat, to his credit, didn't wince at the feeling of his shoulder trying to pop out of its' socket. John didn't seem to be even slightly bothered by the pressure.

Terezi cleared her throat to break the silence.

"...Vantas, why did you have your hair cut to resemble the human's?"

John and Karkat looked at each other in surprise.

Terezi just started laughing.


	4. Blueberry Merengue

The look on Karkat's face mirrored John's, one of shock and surprise. Terezi was laughing so hard she almost couldn't stay in her chair; Equius was simply confused.

"Was there any reason to--"  
"I'm going to fucking KILL Sollux in his sleep, is why," Karkat ground out between clenched teeth, and gave Equius' arm a feeble push. "Now leggo and get the fuck outta my room!"

Equius didn't budge, unbothered by the push. "You're saying this was Captor's doing? Why would he do that?"

A yelp and clatter announced Terezi no longer managing to stay upright in her chair, toppling out and bumping the closet door with Karkat's sickle rack. One of the blades, a wickedly jagged thing resembling glass made of blood, fell from its' position among the lot.

Karkat yelped a warning, and tried to duck out of Equius' grip, but before he could even start to push, Equius was shoved practically to the door as John pushed past him, grabbing the scythe out of the air with his right hand. The blade bit into his palm, going no farther, and a few droplets of bright red blood fell across Terezi's face.

The scent, bright and tangy, overwhelmed her senses for a moment, and she felt a strange, giddy sort of charge, sitting up slowly so as not to bump the door again. John turned the sickle over, wincing as the blood-glass slipped free from where it sat in the meat of his palm, and set it aside as Karkat helped Terezi up, mindful of the rack.

In another uncharacteristic show of compassion, Karkat examined the wound, although the way he snatched John's hand down to eye level was less than friendly. "Didn't go too deep, shouldn't leave much more than a scar," he grumbled, pulling a roll of gauze and a nondescript brown bottle from his desk drawer.

At Terezi's raised eyebrow, he frowned. "What? I can't be prepared to deal with cuts when I keep a dozen fucking blades on my closet door?" he snapped, which got him a stuck-out tongue and a huff in response.

Before he could do anything, however, Equius grabbed John's arm and pulled toward him roughly, causing the human to yelp in surprise. He spent a few moments staring intently at the bloodied palm, as if it was going to give him an answer.

After a few moments of silence, John hazarded a "What?"

He could practically feel the taller troll's eyes burning through his broken shades. "This is your blood." It wasn't a question, nor really even a statement; he said it like an epithet. John nodded, a guarded look on his face.

"Yeah, and you're hurting my arm, so leggo." He grabbed Equius' forearm with his good hand, pulling the damaged hand free and pushing his arm away.

Before he had a chance to turn back, Equius thumped a light punch into his shoulder. With a yelp of shock and pain, John reacted, lashing out and socking him square in the face with his injured hand. There was an audible crunch of something breaking, and the larger troll dropped to the floor, stunned by the impact.

John clutched his hand, making a rather not-so-manly whimper noise. "What the hell, dude?" He glared at the troll. "Do you make a habit of punching people, or am I just special?" He glanced back at Terezi and Karkat for some sort of clarification, but the surprised looks he got in return didn't do much to help. "What?"

Standing, Equius straightened his glasses (which bore a fresh crack across the right lense) and idly pushed his nose back into position with a thumb, the 'crunch' not even registering pain for him. "I have... things to do." He turned to walk out, but stopped, turning back to look at John. Watching him.

Just... watching him.

He made a noise under his breath, something almost like a derisive laugh but closer to a cough, and exited the room.

John turned back to Karkat and Terezi, opened his mouth to say something, and only managed an unintelligible 'mnuh' before the world went black.

"...shit."

\---

"...suitable for a replacement..."

"...losst a lot of blood, but he'll be..."

"...kinda cuuuuuuuute. For a funny pink grub... thing..."  
_Ugh... my head..._  
"...he will be perfectly fine with rest, but that is assuming that you do not bother him. He is not to over-exert himself, do you understand?"  
_Who is that? Sounds kinda like Rose..._  
"Yeah, yeah, I get it. So, Kanaya, when'd you get so good at taking care of people?"  
_Terezi's voice..._  
He opened his mouth, tried to say something, but all that came out was a murbling noise.  
"Wait, shh... you hear that?"  
He tried to speak again. Another wordless burble.  
"It appears that he is speaking in his sleep."  
"Ooh, wonder what he's dreaming about?" Terezi's whispering.  
Aha, so they thought he was asleep! Maybe he could make use of this! 

His eyes remain closed as he moves a little, taking note of the lack of any sort of restraint. He appeared to be on a hard surface-- a table, perhaps. He mumbled again, finding himself a little closer to actual words this time.   
"Hnnfth... jusatas... wuh.. n'more..."  
"Heehee, he's dreaming all right." He felt warm air against his ear. "Y'want more?" Her words were a sultry whisper.  
"Nn...n'more..." he turned his head, felt movement in the air, and almost blew his cover as he realized how close he'd just come to accidentally kissing her, the willpower of a thousand skilled pranksters keeping the hot blush from his cheeks.  
"Terezi, we should not be--"  
"Shushhh, Kanaya, it'll be fine. Just a harmless little game!" Oh, how right she was.  
"Teh... T'rezi..." He heard a rustle of cloth; that certainly got her attention.  
"Wha--*hgm* ...yeeees?" If he didn't do something soon, he was going to end up laughing his ass off from how hard she was trying to 'trick' him. He remembered back to some of their earlier conversations... she saw by scent and taste, right? Sooo...  
"...tasty..." he mumbled.  
"What's tasty?" She whispered.  
_Natch._

\---

"Terezi, we should not be--" Kanaya started, but Terezi gave her a dismissive wave of her hand.  
"Shushhh, Kanaya, it'll be fine. Just a harmless little game!" She giggled softly to herself, leaning against the table John was dozing on. After he had passed out, their cover was pretty much blown; as talented as Karkat was at fixing cuts in people, blood loss wasn't the specialty of the Knight of Blood. 

Doubly so considering the differences in physiology.

With help from Nepeta and Feferi, who both had extensive knowledge of the anatomy of non-troll beings (although for different reasons), Kanaya was able to stem the blood flow relatively easily; Sollux's hacking skills allowed him to both extract the blood from John's Bloody Coat and put the clean blood in a vessel they could use to reintroduce it to him, and in no time, John was essentially unscathed.

Well, discounting the robot hand. 

He was lucky Equius had an extra lying around. Karkat had come in blathering about 'overkill' about the point that Vriska's considerable mind control abilities were drafted to keep John's mind unaware of the pain, but nobody else could figure out how exactly they were going to close up the wound cleanly without sacrificing use of his hand. It would've been fine before, but between Equius yanking him around and him punching the larger troll hard enough to break two knuckles, amputation was the best possible outcome they could provide.

As it was, Kanaya had been forced to remove it just below the elbow; Equius' considerable technical skill meant that the replacement was in place in a matter of minutes. When Vriska's control over his mind was released, he even did them the courtesy of proving it worked, inadvertantly, as he grumble-snorted in his sleep and rubbed at his nose with the metal hand (Terezi found this amusingly cute, although she couldn't begin to describe why.)

It'd been an hour since the impromptu surgery, and Terezi hadn't moved from the benchside; when Karkat asked why she was wearing John's jacket, his only response had been a thump on the head with her cane. Kanaya had only just returned, and was attempting to assuage Terezi's apparent fears when John began to mumble.

"Teh... T'rezi..."  
She nearly fell over as she turned around, the open lime coat flapping out behind her as she leaned down to the curve of his ear. "Wha--" She started, and caught herself, curbing her enthusiasm with a soft clearing of her throat. "Yeeees?"  
He was silent for a moment. She thought maybe he hadn't heard, but he answered. "...tasty..." a simple mumble, and a loaded word.  
She grinned from ear to ear. Humans were easy to manipulate. "What's tasty?" She whispered, pointedly ignoring Kanaya as she uttered a sigh of annoyance.

"...you're..."

She froze. Did she just hear him right? She heard Kanaya lean in a little. "Wh-what did you say?" She whispered, unable to keep a quaver out of her voice.

"...y're...tasty..."he mumbled, and abruptly his eyes snapped open and he clicked his teeth just short of her nose. "NGAWR!"

She might not've seen his eyes open, but she sure as hell heard his feral growl, felt his breath, and the click of teeth so close she later swore he grazed her nose. With a shriek of surprise, she leapt up and back, almost falling over Kanaya.

John laughed like a madman as he sat up, slapping his knee with his good hand. "Heheehee, gotcha good!" He ran his metal hand through his hair, only then noticing the appendage. He paled slightly as he saw where it grafted to his skin, and looked up. "What did--"

_SLAP._

It felt like he'd been struck with a sledgehammer, albeit one that'd been warmed considerably beforehand. He had barely a moment to register the bluegreen flush that threatened to dominate Terezi's face, before she sprinted from the room, nearly plowing into the door.

When logical thought returned to him, John pointed feebly in the direction she'd taken, staring at the other troll (Kanaya?) in surprise and disbelief. With a tutting noise, she shook her head, and pressed a hand to her forehead.

"You humans most certainly have a habit of making huge mistakes," she said, and stepped forward, motioning him off the table. With a hand on his shoulder, she guided him to another door. "There is much you need to learn about troll romance. I suppose now would be the time to do so. We shall enlist Nepeta in this endeavor."

\---

She didn't know where she was going. Her senses were dulled from crying. For some reason, her thoughts were a mess. It wasn't that he had scared her; it wasn't that he'd laughed. If anything, she was angry at herself, for thinking even for one moment that he had some sort of interest in her. So why was she crying?

She ran into someone, stumbled, but kept upright, and would've kept on going if a hand hadn't gripped her arm, swinging her back around into the grip of whoever it was she'd struck into. A sobbing half-hiccup of a breath and she caught a whiff of anger and confusion and pity.

"The fuck happened to you?" Karkat growled, noting the tears on Terezi's cheeks. She didn't answer; just buried her head in his chest. He tried as best he could to dislodge her, but she wasn't letting go, she only cried. Sighing, he glanced about in the hall, and opened his door back up, leading her in with platitudes and nudging.

He had a damn good idea why she was crying, and if he was right, John was going to have a lot of explaining to do.


	5. Apples and Oranges

John looked around. Something didn't add up. Kanaya had mentioned something about teaching him about troll romance... so who were these other guys?

To his right sat a rather heavy-built troll with broad horns and wearing a button shirt over his zodiac shirt. He seemed friendly enough, even giving John a friendly handshake by way of greeting, but the fact that his lower half was mechanical was a bit... off-putting. He even cracked a joke (albeit a bad one) about metal prosthesis, getting a smile out of John.

To his left, a lanky troll wearing facepaint with long, tall horns and touseled hair was crouched, in some way, on the chair, his knees all the way up to his pointed ears. He appeared to be wearing white slippers of some sort, and spotted pants. He rather looked like a clown. Upon noticing he was being studied, the troll smiled broadly, and procured a bottle of Faygo from... somewhere, offering it to him.

John accepted the prooffered drink with a nod of thanks, and sipped it while looking at the other trolls around them. Namely, the rather angry one with the cape and scarf in the front who seemed ready to stab someone with his jagged horns, and the smaller female troll sitting to his left. She was wearing some sort of rebreather device that cycled water.

At the front of the room stood Kanaya with a laser pointer, and a large whiteboard with a number of depictions on it, as well as symbols in a language John couldn't read. He was having a hard time focusing on the topic at hand. A song coming to mind didn't help much, and he stifled a snicker.  
_Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right, here I am..._

\---

_Stuck in the middle with you._

Karkat lifted his head from where he had his chin propped on Terezi's head. She seemed to have calmed down considerably; she'd been crying for twenty minutes straight. He counted himself lucky that he'd at least managed to get her to cling to him and sob uncontrollably somewhere he could sit down, bonus for getting that jacket that stunk of oil and human off of her. Granted, now his chair reeked, but still.

If he had any knowledge of standard human habits regarding their droll view of the concept of 'love', he would've chosen a better location than leaned up against the wall, sitting on his bed with her sprawled in his lap. As it was, he was merely mildly inconvenienced by the fact that his leg was falling asleep.

"Feeling better?" He grumbled as Terezi pulled her glasses off and wiped at her eyes ineffectually. Rolling his eyes, Karkat leaned over and grabbed a box of tissues, pressing a few into her hand. "Here." She sniffled, taking the offering.

"Th-hank you..." She muttered, blowing her nose. Guided by some stupid instinct, Karkat reached up and straightened her hair a bit; the act caused Terezi to cough out a laugh. "I probably-hee... look like shit," she said, sniffling.

He had to fight hard to avoid smiling. "Yeah, you do." He winced when she thumped him in the shoulder, but didn't glorify the act with a verbal reaction. Right now, he just wanted her to be smiling. As much as she annoyed the hell out of him (and oh, how she annoyed him) he hated her more for how she could always get under his skin than anyone else. To see someone else get to her...

"I don't know _why_ it bothered me so much," she said, as if reading his mind. She sighed, and flopped over backwards, staring sightlessly at the ceiling of his room.

"He tricked me, and it was a good one. Hell, I wish I could've thought of it. He played his strengths like a pro, and I got suckered into it." She lifted her hand before her face, as if she could see it. She certainly could still feel the sting from slapping him. It felt like hitting Equius, just... with a little more give.

Karkat wasn't sure he should ask-- she seemed to have calmed down, but for all he knew, she might start bawling again-- but he had to know. "What'd he do to you, anyway?"

She sighed, and let her hand flop to her side.

"He was asleep, or that's what I thought. I was talking to Kanaya..."

\---

"... so that's the biggest difference between Kismesis and Moirails! Any questions so far?" Nepeta's chirpy attitude reminded John a lot of Jade. He could definitely see the two of them becoming friends if they ever met. She tapped the board with a long dowel she'd procured from somewhere.

The troll to his right (Tavros, he vaguely recalled) raised a hand. "Um, Nepeta?" He seemed to be fidgeting a little.

She smiled at him. "Yes, Tavros?"

He nervously flitted his eyes to the door. "Is, uh... is there any reason Vriska keeps peeking through the door?" Five heads turned to the door in question, and a female troll with one hooked horn and the other resembling a claw glowered back at them.

Nepeta blinked a few times as Kanaya pressed a hand to her face with a sigh and strode purposefully across the room.

"Um, no, I don't think there is any reason related to this class. Any other questions?"

Kanaya closed the door behind her, and after a moment, Captain Scarfcape von Lightninghorns leaned toward the girl beside him. "An auspistice's wwork is nevver done," he muttered. She laughed, but all John heard was "Glub!" Or maybe that was exactly what she said. He wasn't sure.

The troll to his left elbowed him, once, twice, and he turned his attention back to him. "You bein' watched, muth'fucka," he chuckled, and took a sip of his third Faygo. John idly wondered where he was getting them from, but that thought went out the window when he realized Galamazoo-whatshisname meant Nepeta. 

Realizing she was noticed, she grinned and waggled an overlong sleeve his way, and abruptly turned to jot something down in her tablet computer, a catlike grin on her face.

John felt vaguely unnerved by this.

\---

"...and that scared you?" Karkat sounded incredulous. _Thump_. "Ow!" Now he sounded hurt. She could hear him rubbing his shoulder.

"It didn't scare me. I was startled," Terezi emphasized, bobbing her head with the word. "And then he started laughing. 'Gotcha good!' he said." 

She uttered an almost guttural growl and pressed the insides of her wrists to her eyes. "I don't know why but that just pissed me off. I'm not an expert on redrom, blackrom, moirail, auspistice, any of that stupid romantic stuff, but some part of me kinda hoped..." She sighed.

"...kinda hoped that someone actually felt a little redrom for you," Karkat finished, sounding almost downtrodden.

She lifted her head from the bed, and sat up. He was giving off an aura that bore sadness and hate in equal measure. His expression was even visible to her inner eye, which was rare for him; It meant he wasn't doing that weird angry fume thing he always did. It scared her a little.

The only other time she could see him like this was after he came back from the lab the first time. After the Creation.

"...Karkat?"

He turned away, drawing his legs up and turning to face the wall.

"...Emotions are fucking stupid," He spat. "No matter what we decide, no matter what we want, they never do what we want 'em to, and they always find a way to make us do stupid shit." He was shaking a little; she couldn't tell whether from anger or sadness.

"Even when we think we have a handle on 'em, when we think we might have it figured out, shit happens and throws everything out the fucking window. Kanaya knows that first-hand, she thought she could have some happy-sappy redrom thing going with Vriska. Then bam, turns out she's just an overworked Auspistice for Vriska and Tavros.

Only it's not really Vriska and Tavros, 'cause Bighorns is scared shitless of 'er and Vriska realizes this, so she thinks she's got no chance. So Kanaya spends an assload of time straightening her out, finally gets her kinda not-quite-a-bitch, and then Tavros gets all grubdamned impudent and throws her off a walkway but saves her and now she's crazy for him." A thud, then a second one. He was hitting his head on the wall. He did it again, only harder, and she winced at the vibration that ran through the bed.

"So now Vriska thinks Tavros likes her after all, and maybe he does, but it's not Redrom OR Blackrom because he's _too fucking weird_, he's more like a human than a troll. He actually thinks it might be 'love'. Non-hate, non-pity, gushing-hearts-of-fucking-stupidity _love_, and all because he saw something while he was watching the humans.

So yeah, I know exactly just how you're fucking feeling. Read you loud and fucking clear." Another thump. "Loud..." Thump. "And..." Thump. "Clear." _THWACK._ A smell not unlike cherries and strawberries and pennies clawed at Terezi's senses, and she grabbed his shoulder, yanking him around; he refused to look at her, but she forced his face up, dabbing at where he'd struck his head on the wall hard enough to draw blood with a tissue.

"You're an idiot," She grumbled as he tried to pull away, and grabbed tightly to his short horns, yanking his head back around to face her despite his protests. He eventually stopped struggling as she dabbed at the injury in a show of surprisingly matronly attention. When he was no longer bleeding, she flicked him square on the wound, which earned her a pained yelp. She frowned down at him.

"Who are you so angry about, anyway? What, do you like Kanaya or something?" She smirked. "Yeah, I can _totally_ see that working out. Captain Rageface and Lady Auspistice, redrom of the year." She ignored the mounting rage she could sense coming from him; it just meant he was closer to normal.

"Or maybe you like Tavros? You certainly talked about him a lot. Don't see how that'd work out well, suppose I could see it as a Blackrom, but I don't think he even has the capacity to hate--MRPH!" A hand pressed to her face abruptly, and she found herself shoved back onto the bed as Karkat got up. 

"Fuck you, for me trying to fucking help you!" He shouted, swung his door open, and slammed it hard enough that the hastily repaired hinges came loose, dropping the door into the room.

Terezi sat up, dumbstruck.

"...no. No fucking way."

\---

"...so then... Matesprites are when you pity someone so much you want to be with them and keep an eye on them, so they don't wind up... more... pitiful?"

John was trying his hardest to follow the logic. At a glance from him, Kanaya nodded, once, slowly, and Nepeta gave him an enthusiastic thumbs-up. Well, a sleeves-up, anyway.

"...and Kismesis, which is pronounced like 'nemesis' and not like 'kiss-me-sis', is when you hate someone beyond any shadow of a doubt, and they hate you to the absolute as well. They're important to you because they're your absolute worst enemy." He nodded to himself. That much was easy to follow. Gamzee barked a laugh at 'kiss-me-sis', as he had the first three times the matter came up.

Hate was an emotion humans and Trolls alike both bore. The idea of viewing 'love' as a form of pity was the hard part.

"An auspistice is someone who, uh..." he glanced about at the expectant faces of the other trolls. Capescarf-- er, Eridan-- looked like he was trying to will John to say the next part; Ferrari--Fifi--Pfeifer-- the fish girl was watching him like he was the most interesting person in the world, Tavros was smiling encouragingly, and Gamzee was spaced off again.

Someone needed to keep an eye on him. Oh! "Auspistice is someone who intervenes in the relations of another pair so as to straighten out misunderstandings and direct the relationship toward a favorable result, whether redrom or blackrom!" He nodded to himself, and Gamzee matched his nod. Maybe he wasn't spaced out after all.

"And Moirails are people who are the closest of friends. One of them is usually more excitable or emotionally charged, and the other is usually more level-headed, and serves to keep them in line, like an auspistice for one person instead of two."

Nepeta practically pounced on him as soon as he finished speaking in a congratulatory hug. "You got it! See, I told you it would be easy to figure out!"

Eridan rolled his eyes, his arms folded across his chest. "Wwhatevver. It's nothin' special to figure out romance," he scoffed. "Figurin' out wwhat you're leanin' to, that's wwhere it gets confusing."

John nodded. "I can see where you're coming from with that. Humans don't have all this weird stuff about auspistices and moirails and stuff." Realizing he had the entire room's attention, he shrugged. "Human romances are pretty confusing, but it's a little... simpler. If you like someone, they're a friend. If you really like someone, then you love them. If you hate someone, they're your enemy, and if you absolutely positively hate them, they're your nemesis."

The trolls seemed to be following him, to some lesser extent, so he continued. "Humankind bases many of their emotions off of four basic principles: happiness, sadness, anger, and fear. Every emotion we feel falls in that range: you like or love someone because they make you feel happy, for instance, and the idea of that person leaving you or being hurt makes you sad." Tavros raised a hand, and he nodded to him. "Whassup?"

"What is, er... what is 'happy'?"

The other trolls echoed his confusion, save for Eridan, who forced an exaggerated sigh, rolling his eyes. "I don't havve time for this," He grumbled, standing and storming out of the room. Feferi was close behind. "Eridan~*glub*! Wait!"

John sighed. How could he explain it? This was getting complicated.

He didn't see Karkat glowering from a door at the back of the room.

\---

Even with years of practice moving around without sight, Terezi hated being without her cane. More than that, she hated herself for dumbly taking off and leaving her cane behind after she slapped John. 

  
She shouldn't have any trouble finding her way back to the room, or so she figured, but not being able to tell if she was about to trip over something left her more cautious than usual. This in turn made her take longer; in the lab, that meant being alone with her thoughts.

Karkat had acted like that before, on a few occasions. She went to him whenever she had emotional trouble for the very simple reason that he knew how her mind worked. He was a jerk, to be sure, but he always seemed to be able to understand where she was coming from. To that extent, he served as a rather effective moirail: despite being the more emotional one, he could be amazingly stable-minded when it came down to it.

Yet to look at their relationship, any outsider would see a simple black relationship. She hated how pissy he was all the time; he hated that she always seemed to know how to get to him. Perhaps they didn't hate each other as much as most kismesis, but it was a healthy amount of hate. She fairly well figured, if nothing else, they had that.

On the other hand, he always seemed ready with a cautionary (and expletive-laden) diatribe whenever she found herself questioning her relationship with others. Even back when she and Vriska started working as Team Scourge, he was quick to warn her to keep Eight-eyes at arm's distance. His advice was usually effective.

So that meant perhaps he was readily able to serve as an auspistice for her. The idea of Karkat and Kanaya, Fussyfangs and Crabbyhorns, tag-team auspisticing the rest of the trolls, brought a grin unbidden to her face. Yet at the same time, there was a twinge of bitterness. It was hastily followed by rationalization: _she wouldn't be able to stand him._ Besides herself and Nepeta, not many girls could.

Aradia could; she was a phantom, though. Out of the running. Karkat and Vriska? Well, it'd be a rather healthy caliginous relationship, but no, Vriska had enough romantic shenanigans on her plate. Feferi? She was certainly one of Karkat's few friends, but Eridan's obvious redrom crush on her would be a wrench in the system.

She stopped at the entrance to the room where John had been. With a few sniffs, she was able to easily locate her cane, and sat down on the table, touching a hand to one of the dried blood splatters from where they'd operated.

"...so what about me...?" she mumbled.

A sound perked her interest, and she lifted her head, carefully following it. Two rooms adjacent, John was talking about something.

"...in that range: you like or love someone because they make you feel happy, for instance, and the idea of that person leaving you or being hurt makes you sad."

Seemed he was explaining the human views of romance. Maybe that would clarify things a bit; maybe what she was feeling was easier to describe with the human terminology.

"What is, er... what is 'happy'?" Tavros asked.

Leaning against the wall, Terezi brooded to herself. What _is_ 'happy'? When trolls are raised, they're lead to believe in the concepts of hate and pity, the only two emotions any truly sentient entity feels. Everything is build on varying levels of the two emotions. That is the law of nature, or so they were told from a young age.

That didn't explain why most of the trolls weren't very troll-like. With the Creation event inherent to all SGRUB sessions, it made sense; they weren't really trolls, beyond some basic genetic connections. To a one, the twelve trolls were a result of genetic blending of one another. So who was to say that their emotions followed basic Alternian convention?

"Happy is... huh. Not sure how to explain it," John muttered. Terezi smirked. She could practically see him scratching his head and staring at the floor, trying to figure out what to say.

"Happy is a warm feeling you get deep inside. It's when you find yourself wanting to experience more of what you're experiencing at that moment," he finally said.

"Like that fuckin' awesome feelin' you get from bein' with friends an' doin' fun shit!" Gamzee eloquently injected, followed by a bright _fssht_ and an eruption of sugary red hitting Terezi's senses. She really was going to have to talk him into giving her a taste of that stuff sooner or later.

"Exactly! Thanks, Gamzee."

"No prob, s'all good, brother. Hey, s'it true you pushed Equius over like it wasn't nothin'?"

\---

Karkat grumbled. "'Warm feeling deep inside.' That's pity, numbnuts." He wanted dearly to give John a piece of his mind, but he couldn't muster up enough anger. He felt a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach, since he stormed out on Terezi. He could't quite place it. It almost felt like pity, but not for her, or for John.

It was almost like feeling pity for himself.

"Uh, yeah, I did. It was an accident, though, Terezi was going to get hurt, and--"

"So how strong are you anyway?" Nepeta interrupted. Karkat found himself interested, if only because he and John seemed to be at the very least close to the same size.

John shrugged, acting bashful. "I don't really know. I didn't think I was that strong, I just thought you guys were really light," He confessed. "Figured it was just related to the gravity here."

Nepeta walked up to John and poked his arm, then lifted it out. "Hold this here please," She said, and John complied; with a deft hop, she was perched on his arm like a tree branch. John didn't seem bothered by the weight.

Tavros started clapping. "Cool! You think you're strong enough to hold me up?"

John shrugged. "Might as well try? She's not heavy at all." Tavros hopped up from his chair and stepped forward as John crouched. When the big-horned troll was seated on his arm, he stood up again. "I'm, uh, not too heavy, am I?"

After a moment, John shrugged. "You're definitely heavier, I think it's your legs. Not that bad though."

Abruptly, Gamzee lurched up out of his chair, setting his half-empty Faygo on his seat. "Motherfuckin' count me in! And I'll form the head!" he spouted cheerfully, and with a running start, leaped into the air to land on John's shoulders in a handstand, almost unbalancing them. 

John wobbled, but remained upright, although wary of the fact that Gamzee's horns were mere inches away from his face. After a moment, he started laughing. "Flee before the might of Trolltron!" He waved his arms forward and back, walking mechanically in a circle, and they started laughing too.

Karkat's eye twitched. That sick feeling was quickly being overtaken by the urge to stab someone.

"Vantas, have you seen Nepeta, I--" Equius began, appearing out of nowhere.   
"AUGHFUCK!"  
Karkat nearly climbed the door in surprise, and fell into the room.

\---

Terezi felt a strange twang when Nepeta jumped up onto John's arm. He was emanating a sort of pleased air that left her mildly annoyed. The feeling went away when Tavros joined in the absurd display, and she had to fight back a grin as John started robot-stomping about. For some reason, she couldn't stay mad at him.

So if 'happiness' was the mind's way of expressing that it wanted to experience more of what it was experiencing... what did that say of her feelings for John? The thought of him dreaming about her made her 'happy'... which was why when he revealed it was a joke, it made her... sad? Yes, she supposed that fit.

But by that reasoning, that meant she loved him. That didn't make any sense. She didn't know him that well, really, so why would she have such feelings for him? And what of Karkat? She enjoyed their little spats, and she could tell that he did too, to some degree... and that feeling of sadness when he stormed out earlier was unmistakable.

She frowned, and closed her eyes, resting her head against the wall behind her. By all accounts, she loved both John and Karkat. She enjoyed being with both of them, and the idea of either of them leaving did make her sad. But with Karkat, she had to admit she hated much of what he did. 

He was impatient, rude, loud, and couldn't keep his temper in check worth beans. He treated the world like he was getting a perpetual karmic bulge-bashing, and every time she helped him, she had to practically twist his arm (or his neck) to get him to accept it, and with the way he treated her half the time, she knew he hated her.

Perhaps the concept of 'love' could be seen as flushed _and_ caliginous? Black and red romance? She hated Karkat, but she loved him; despite his perpetual anger, he seemed to feel the same for her. John didn't anger her at all, and she (logically) had to love him too. If Karkat's feelings for her were what she figured, however, he hated John, period.

And knowing Karkat, he mistook her misreading her own emotions as her hating John, which meant...

"AUGHFUCK!"  
Terezi paled. "Not good."

  



	6. Hazelnut Cranberry Pistachio

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mounting tensions come to a head, and a confrontation occurs.

"AUGHFUCK."

Trolltron John froze in mid robo-step, blinking owlishly at Karkat, sprawled on the floor at the back of the room. Equius stood over the downed Cancer-troll, holding both hands up with a 'don't look at me' expression on his face.

"You ok?" John asked after a moment, crouching and letting Nepeta and Tavros down. Gamzee handsprung off of John's shoulders, performing a clean pirouette in the air and landing beside Nepeta as John stepped forward to try and help Karkat up.

Karkat yanked his arm away from John, pushing himself up off the floor and drawing himself up to his full height to glare at the human. His apparent anger was somewhat diminished by John having three inches on him.

"The fuck are you doing here?" He growled. "You said you were unconscious when the board landed here, and I believe that, but what possible fucking purpose could you serve in being here other than PISSING ME OFF?"

John held up his hands, frowning. "Hey, what the hell, dude? I didn't ask to come here! I'm just trying to make the most of things!" He stepped back from Karkat, almost tripping on the half-empty Faygo that Gamzee left earlier. He caught himself on a chair.

"By fucking things up?" Karkat snapped. "Screwing with everybody? Oh, look at me, I'm just an innocent pink fleshy bastard that can dick around when the entire universe's fate rests on my shoulders because I don't know what brought me here so I suppose I don't have to do A GRUBDAMN FUCKING THING TO TRY AND GET BACK!"

John began shouting responses to Karkat's rage just as loudly, if not a little louder.

"WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU THINK!? I'm just trying to deal with the fact that my dad up and disappeared, my friends and I are the only thing that can possibly save our entire planet and one of my friends might end up dead because I'm not able to access my computer, and IT'S ALL BECAUSE I PLAYED A GODDAMN GAME!" He was rather impressively matching Karkat's rage with pent-up frustration of his own.

The troll faltered a moment, but snapped back resolutely. "Oh, boo FUCKING hoo, I'm such a sad little wimp, my whole world's been turned upside-down by an event that I had no possible planning for! WELL AT LEAST YOU DIDN'T GROW UP WITH THE KNOWLEDGE THAT YOU WERE GOING TO DO SOME BIG IMPORTANT BULLSHIT!"

John seemed to be completely stymied. "What does that even me--"

"WE were raised with an emphasis on learning to BUILD BULLSHIT because apparently EVERYONE ON THE WHOLE GODDAMN PLANET EXCEPT US knew! IT WAS FUCKING PROPHESIZED YOU STUPID BULGESNIFFING COCKASS!" His hands had long curled into fists, his entire body seeming to vibrate.

"W-Wait a minute," John stammered, his anger abating, confusion taking over. "You... your parents raised you knowing you were going to play this game and lose?" He looked around to the other trolls for some sort of collusion. They all avoided his gaze, including Gamzee and Equius, who he would've expected something out of. Karkat just kept yelling.

"We didn't HAVE parents! We had a bunch of fucking ANIMALS that were contractually obligated by the fucking ROYALTY to raise us! Even the ones who lucked out and got a lusus that was fucking INTELLIGENT were still raised by things that knew we were going to FUCK EVERYTHING UP!" He started pacing, waving his hands about as he ranted.

"But no, that's not even the best part! At least we had our loving, protecting lusii to raise us, but OH WAIT, NO, THEY ALL FUCKING DIED HORRIBLY. Most of 'em died right in front of us! Some of them died BECAUSE of us! Sure, we were able to make them our sprites, but BIG FUCKING DEAL, guess where they are now? GONE!

WE lost the game. WE lost our families. WE lost our WHOLE FUCKING SPECIES, even if it was a load of SHIT because technically we aren't even trolls because HA HA, WHAT A SURPRISE, WE'RE ALL FUCKING PARADOX CLONES."   
He whirled to jab a finger at John. "The only thing we have left is putting up with each other and making sure you STUPID HUMANS don't fuck everything up! Big surprise there, here you are, FUCKING EVERYTHING UP!"

John sighed, and sat down heavily on one of the folding chairs. "I know." Karkat deflated slowly, his expression of anger melting into confusion and shock as John started talking.

\---

Terezi's heart sank as the mood in the room shifted from one very pissed Karkat and a half dozen nervous others to an overwhelming sense of despair with every word John spoke.

"I know I'm fucking everything up, because that's all I ever seem to do. I was the one who talked to Rose about trying to sequence break, when she was the only one who was trying to play the game right. I tried to sequence break myself, but wound up getting myself and Jade killed, which is why Dave had to come back and self-prototype." He had lowered his head, his hands balling into fists in his lap.

"I also fucked up because it was my fault for not waking up in time for both me and Jade to get out of the way of Prospit falling. It's my fault for her dreamsprite dying, it's my fault for pushing my dad away when he just wanted to be a part of my life and it's my fault for coming here and for scaring Terezi and for pissing you off and for dicking around when I should be trying to find a way home.

But you were at least raised knowing that you'd have to fight. You grew up being trained and given the skills to be able to handle something like being the ones to save the world. What training did I have? What did I get? Shitty movies that nobody likes and everything I ever wanted, but oh, I hated it, because I was an idiot." A distinctly salty smell was beginning to claw its' way through the cloying reek of despair.

"So now that I'm here, Rose and Dave and Jade are probably screwed, and Dave's gonna have to jump back in time again and fix everything, but that means another future where Jade dies because I can't get to her, and what's going to happen to Rose?" He lifted his head. Karkat seemed prepared for the tears, but not for the accusatory glare.

"So I have no problem with you screaming at me for the mistakes I've made. Go ahead and yell at me all you want. But know that I'm just trying to deal with the fact that I'm the worst fucking 'hero' that could've possibly wound up here." He thrust his shiny new metal hand up between them, shaking like a leaf.

"I lost my fucking hand because I tried to be a nice guy! I've lost my dad because I ignored him when all he wanted was for me to love him! And I've lost my friends because I fucked up and fell asleep at the worst possible time and woke up far too late and now all I can do is try and make the most of it and get to know you guys!

I'm just trying to keep from fucking everything else up, even if that's all I seem able to do! So FUCK YOU if you don't like the fact that I'm trying to keep from having A FUCKING PSYCHOTIC BREAKDOWN!" The fist came down hard on the folding chair next to him, which folded in the wrong direction from the impact.

Terezi winced as John stood up and delivered a swift field-goal kick to the chair, launching it across the room before storming toward the exit. Realizing he was headed toward her, she steeled herself and pushed the door open.

John froze in his tracks at the blank expression on Terezi's face.

"If you're going to get mad at anyone, yell at me," she said after a moment. "Karkat was angry because of something I said, and he just happened to take it out on you because you were convenient. It's the way he handles stress."

She turned her head slightly, focusing her attention on Karkat, who looked shellshocked. "I'm sorry," she said simply, and turned, tap-tapping her way out of the room.

John stood there, dumbfounded, his own expression a mirror of Karkat's. A pregnant silence filled the room.

"Too much fuckin' heavy atmosphere in here," Gamzee said after a moment, another bottle of Faygo in hand and already one-third gone. "Everyone just needs to chill an' be motherfuckin' calm and shit." Karkat opened his mouth to shoot an insult.

"I want to talk to Karkat alone, guys."

All eyes in the room swung to the human as John turned around to give a pointed nod to each of them. "D'you mind giving us a few moments?" He took off his glasses, rubbing at his eyes with the sleeve of his shirt. "I just want to talk. No yelling, no arguing, no hitting. I promise."

Equius was first to react, stepping forward to herd the other three toward the back door. "This conversation is for the two of you alone. I will respect that," he said, "and endeavor to keep all others from earshot until further notice."

With that, they exited the room.

John shut the door and locked it before picking up the chair he had kicked across the room. After a few moments trying to get it to fold, he sighed and propped it against the wall, picking up one of the other chairs and turning it to face the center of the room.

He picked up another chair, and set it down across from the first, facing it, and gestured for Karkat to sit. Wordlessly, the troll complied, and he sat across from him.

"This is about Terezi," John started, and held up a hand when Karkat mode an indignant noise. "I know it is, because you're the only one I can think she'd go running to, so don't bother arguing the point," he continued, and Karkat grew silent.

"I'm not going to lie and say I understand anything about troll romance. It's all very complicated and confusing, which, surprise surprise, you told me already. It wasn't until someone laid it out for me that I really understood, and I don't think I even really get it, because I can't." He sighed, and leaned back in the chair.

"Troll emotions are based on pity and hate, and human emotions are based on love and hate and a thousand different things. And maybe we're both wrong and they're exactly the same, and we just think they're different because we were raised to believe it, but in the end it doesn't matter."

\---

Terezi sighed, leaning her head back against the door behind her. She hadn't gone far at all, barely reaching the other side of the room before hearing John say he wanted to talk to Karkat alone; after he closed the door, she came right back to it, and sat against the door, eavesdropping on the conversation.

"I didn't know I was sending mixed signals to Terezi, even if the mistake might be hers for misreading me in the first place," John said. "And you can be hardly blamed for getting angry over the fact that she got mad at me for something I did. I'd like to think I figured out, at least a little, about how you feel about her."

There was a brief pause before Karkat spoke up.

"Terezi doesn't mock my interests," He muttered. "She makes fun of the fact that I'm embarassed about it, but she's never directly made fun of the things I like. She's been almost like whatever you humans call 'family' to me for a long time. Whether I like it or not, she keeps my head on straight, even if she's a bitch about it."

She smirked. "And you're still an insensitive bulgerider," she whispered.

"Even when her lusus died, even when the world was ending... even when she lost the use of her eyes, I don't think I've ever known her to cry. So seeing her cry, because of something you did, it..." He sighed. "It pissed me off more than anything. But then she explained it all, and I wasn't mad at you any more."

Terezi drew her knees up to her chest, resting her forehead on them. For a few moments, she wondered if they'd guessed someone might be listening in, but Karkat finally spoke again.

"I was mad at myself, first for jumping to conclusions, and then for entertaining the stupid notion that maybe she thought of me as something more than just an insensitive noisy jackass." He chuckled bitterly. "I chewed Eridan out over making a huge scene out of his problems with Feferi, but here I was, ready to go pound my head against a wall until there was nothing left of me but a red smear."

She heard him shift as he leaned forward, propping his elbows on his knees. "See this? I really did hit my head on the wall until I bled. And she sat there and cleaned it up like I was just some stupid kid who had scraped his knee, like she always does. I throw a fit, she's usually the one to hit me in the head and say 'get over it'. And it works, because when she says it, I know she's not doing it to be a bitch, she's doing it to stop me being a bitch."

John chuckled appreciatively at the wordplay, and Terezi smiled to herself. "Good to know I can get something into that empty head of his," She mumbled.

"But this time around it didn't feel like that. Somehow I figured she knew how I felt, knew that I had some sort of flushed leanings toward her, and was dismissing it as me being an idiot. And then I went and screamed at her and left." Karkat uttered a sigh; she heard the soft rasp of carapace against carapace as he rubbed at his face with one hand.

"Then I came across you explaining the human views of 'love' and 'friendship' and all that convoluted bullshit. Maybe you humans have a better grasp on emotions than we trolls think. It would certainly explain why people like Tavros and Gamzee exist. They're hands down the worst trolls I've ever known.

They don't seem capable of really hating people. The worst I've seen Gamzee was when he finished the last of his sopor slime pies before the game ended. He got cranky, and snapped at me once. Just a simple 'Fuck you, motherfucker', and that's all he said. Everything else out of him is 'fucking miracles man' and 'chillax, juggalo, nothin' but a thing,' and 'what's up motherfucker?'"

John laughed at that. "He's certainly one of the friendliest trolls I've met so far," he said.

Karkat uttered a sigh of exasperation. "Annoying lazy fucker is what he is. Anyway, enough about him. I started thinking that maybe you were on to something with all that love and friendship shit, and then Equius scared the fuck out of me, so I overreacted. So... sorry."

There was a sound of people standing. "It's alright, I understand where you're coming from. I just don't want us to be at each other's throats. If I'm stuck here for now, I want to at least be on good terms with you guys." He chuckled. "So, I guess we're rivals for Terezi's affection?"

Karkat barked a short, bitter laugh. "Like she even gives a shit about me? She's about as close to a moirail as anyone has been for me, but judging by how much of an ass I've made of myself, she probably won't have anything to do with me. Fuck, she didn't even have a clue that I liked her until I went and had a goddamn hissyfit over it."

John was quick to reply. "Hey, that just means you weren't being forward with it. All you have to do now is try to be less of an angry asshole and accept that people will think what they're going to think. What've you got to lose? It's not like they can avoid you here."

Karkat seemed to perk up at the idea. "Yeah, true." There was a soft 'clap' as he placed a hand on John's shoulder. "You're not so bad, Egbert. But if you tell anyone--"

"--yeah, yeah, I know, trust me, I get it from Dave a lot. 'Tell anyone and I'll strangle you,'" John chuckled. "I get it."

"Good. Now, you were saying Jade wouldn't be able to get into the medium if you're here. I think there might be a way to..." their voices faded as they left the room.

Terezi let her legs slide down to rest on the floor as she sat, lost in thought. So Karkat trusted her to keep him level. She never considered herself a moirail for him. She just found his self-deprecating annoying and did what she could to keep him from doing it.

Why did she keep him in line, anyway? He was irritable, treated everyone like dirt, and all because of that stupid insecurity he had about his blood color. He didn't react to her cleaning him up after he bloodied his forehead, but she had thought that was because of her pointing out that she still remembered when she'd learned his hemochrome by licking his face when he'd blushed.

He knew she wouldn't tell anyone about it, she'd said so herself. She didn't care about his blood color, or anyone's. Equius or Eridan could be neon plaid-blooded for all she cared, didn't mean she'd listen to them. Karkat's blood was a tasty color, but then, so was Aradia's before she died... although not nearly to the absolute degree his was.

 

She pulled herself upright and unfolded her cane, tapping her way out of the laboratory. Even taking human emotions into consideration, she was getting tired of all this ambiguity and confusion; she needed someone to bounce ideas off of, someone she could talk to about relationships without worrying that everyone else would find out.

The thought gave her a slight chill, but more because it bothered her to admit it. Perhaps the best person to talk to was the only other one that couldn't figure out her own emotions.


	7. Chapter 7

"...and he's perfectly fine with it now," Terezi sighed. "So now they're not at each others' throats, and I'm not entirely sure how I feel about that because now I'm starting to wonder whether I actually like either of them."

Silence reigned. She tilted her head. "Well, John I can understand being fine with it, he seems to be okay with a lot of things around here. He didn't even bat an eyelash at the fact that he's able to pick us up like we're nothing." 

She chuckled briefly, a faint flush tinting her cheeks. "And he's really soft, like some sort of fabric. From what I was able to tell, humans have this weird blend of troll and musclebeast physiology-- they have the same cardiovascular structures, similar bone structure, but instead of a protective carapace, they have muscle and tendons like the beasts."

The blush deepend, and she frowned. "I never said that! I just said it was soft! Like pushing on a warm chair cushion or something." She waved a hand nocommitally. "Don't change the subject."

To any ordinary bystander, she appeared to be sitting in Equius' observatory alone, talking to herself. Sollux wasn't an ordinary bystander, though. He sat at the top of the stairwell, serving more as a guard than anything else.

Ordinarily, his Vision Twofold left him relatively unseeing to certain aspects of the world, but with a mere flip of his glasses, in the violet glow of everything around him, he could make out a ghostly sillhouette, a familiar troll with a spectral trail that reeked of time shenanigans.

When the trolls had entered the Veil to hide from their fate, they had been allowed to bring the sprites along. At first, all was well, but they knew eventually that the sprites' very nature would cause them to dissipate. 

As each of the sprites disappeared, each with a sickeningly wet _spop_ akin to the suckers of a tentacled creature being pulled free of flesh, she became more and more panicked. One by one over half an hour, they disappeared. In her haste and fear, she had attempted to fling herself not backward, but _forward_ in time: perhaps if she pushed far enough, the separation would never occur.

The effect was altogether unexpected. Her soul was separated from the sprite, which dissipated into nothingnesss; however, she retained the patterning of the first prototyping, bearing the webbed fingers, eye-horns, and spectral sprite-tail. The essence of her soul was scattered across time; she found herself in every point in time in the facility at once. It stretched her so 'thin' that nobody could see her.

Except, of course, the eyes of the blind, and the mind.

He could hear her as a result of his multiple exposures to the mind honey over time; it was by sheer accident one morning that he found that by inverting the polarity of his glasses to his eyes, he could see her, albeit only just. It gave him headaches to see that way.

She had gone back to her hollow, unfeeling self, but she still spoke to him. It was through Sollux that she worked her timeline management, and how she communicated to others, for the most part.

Not always, though.

"Anyway! You're getting me off track! I need your help, Aradia. Seriously." Terezi folded her hands in her lap, lowering her head.

"_...I fail to un derstand in what way I might help, but I will en deavor to assist you as I can..._" Aradia's words were always faint, but lately she had gotten softer... more detatched. 

"I know it's a mean thing to do, but because you're not burdened by emotions, you're able to think rationally. That's what I need right now," Terezi explained. "I like John. He's a nice guy. I also like Karkat. He's nice when he's not being a quantum bonebulge singularity. Hell, he even said himself that he liked me." She sighed, and uttered a groan. "I just don't know what to do!"

"_...you be lieve that I might be able to help you rat ionalize your thoughts... but you do not seem to un derstand them well enough to ex plain them to me..._"

"I know, I know... It's just..." She shook her head. "You've told me about you and Sollux and Equius. You can't figure out whether you like them or hate them because you can't feel your emotions. I thought maybe you'd have some sort of insight. I'm sorry, I'm just confused, I guess."

"_...your con fusion is war ranted... I can not de cide my sit uation be cause I can not de termine if I ever had feel ings for them... but if I had to make a choice, I be lieve in your sit uation I would choose to learn what John's feel ings for you are..._"

Sollux nodded to himself. It was simple logic: she understood Karkat's feelings. She understood her own, as well. But she didn't know how John felt.

"I suppose you're right," Terezi muttered. "Maybe I'm afraid that really he just thinks of me as a moir--...a friend... and that I might just end up hurting myself."

"_...that is a mis take that many who have fallen in love have made... and many who will love will make that mis take simply be cause it seems to be the only pos sible path to take..._"

"Then what is the point? Shouldn't I just accept that Karkat definitely likes me and go with that?" Terezi stood, pacing slowly. "Or am I making a fuss over something that won't matter because we're all doomed anyway?"

"_...it is not my place to say... but I will say this to you: I en vy you..._" Terezi's head snapped up in surprise. "_...in time, you will un derstand what your feel ings are... but I have no thing to do but wait... and watch... I am o kay with this... but I still en vy you..._"

Sollux flipped his glasses, aching to at least see Aradia for a moment. Her spectral, smudge-like form came into vision as Terezi reached up to give Aradia's shoulder a gentle squeeze. A webbed hand came up to rest on the hand on her shoulder.

"We'll figure something out, figure a way to get you back, Aradia. I promise," Terezi whispered sadly.

"_...there is no thing you can do... but your sen timent is a ppreciated... fare well..._" Aradia gently removed Terezi's hand from her shoulder, and turned around; Sollux's eyes widened as she locked his gaze with her own, and for a brief instant, he saw pain and sadness reflected in her empty eyes before she faded away again.

It seemed that the longer she fought to stay coalesced in one time zone, the harder it got, and the shorter her stays became. Perhaps eventually she would cease to exist altogether.

He couldn't decide if the feeling in his stomach was pain, or relief. Either way, he didn't like it.

\---

John frowned at the console sitting before him. Karkat had lead him to the main Appearifier room, where the vast majority of the trolls' supplies were summoned from. The idea was simple: bring John's computer to the Veil, connect through the temporal network that allowed the trolls to contact the humans, and get Jade into the medium that way.

The logic was sound, but he couldn't make heads or tails of their written language, and he told Karkat as much.

"You're fucking kidding me." Karkat's deadpan expression morphed to anger. "How the fuck are you able to talk to us if you can't read what we're typing? For that matter, how can you speak the same language as us but not have the same written language?"

John shrugged. "I always figured it was a part of the game mechanics? Or that you guys had the same language as us? I don't know. Whenever you pestered me, all I saw was English." 

He stared at the command console for the Appearifier, nonplussed. "This doesn't even look like the language from the console that I used to make the paradox babies."

Karkat rubbed at his temples with a sigh. "Fine, fuck, whatever. Look, just tell me what you need and when to get it from and I'll do it." He stepped up to the console, and with a few deft clicks and taps, John's room was visible, untouched since he left it.

"All right, I need my desktop. That big thing there," John said, pointing at a gray box sitting on a desk. "I also need the monitor sitting on top of it, the mouse, keyboard, and the power cords."

As John pointed out the various objects, Karkat drag-highlighted the group. "Anything else?"

John thought for a moment. "Oh! I need a copy of the server disc! But... that's not here..." He sighed. "Great, what're we going to do about that?"

Karkat raised an eyebrow at him. "Are your 'discs' system exclusive, or can you use one on more than one computer?"

John snapped his fingers and thumped his fist onto his hand. "That's right! Once you get the computer and stuff here, see if you can go to Rose's house and get her server disc!"

Karkat grumbled under his breath as he keyed in the sequence to bring the computer to the Veil. A number of symbols appeared on the screen, rapidly scrolling down, and after a few moments and and an obnoxiously loud 6x _-IFY!_ combo, John's computer sat atop the Appearifier's pad.

Abruptly, the lights went black. Karkat's epithetic response was immediate.

"God fucking DAMMIT why does this have to ALWAYS happen at the worsst possible time!?" A snap echoed in the darkness, and the room lit with the dim glow of a neon green sickle.

John blinked rapidly at the glowing weapon. "You have a--"

"Glow-sickle, yeah, I know. Feferi found these weird stupid glow-stick things and suggested we all alchemize something we could keep on hand at all times for blackouts like this," He grumbled, storming across the laboratory floor and yanking open a hatch in the floor.

"Sometimes if there's too much shit using power in the lab, the breaker flips, and then I have to jump through a fuckton of hoops to flip it back. Come on." Without further fanfare, he started climbing down. John scurried across the room before the light faded too much, and after a moment's indecision, followed Karkat into the hole.

In the darkness, a pair of faintly glowing green eyes rose from the pile of computer parts on the Appearifier pad.

**Author's Note:**

> The 'incident' between Vriska and Tavros referenced in the chat-log is examined in 'Losing Control'.


End file.
